The Kindness Challenge: Thirty Days to Improve Any Relationship

I read this book in December 2018.  The premise for Shaunti Feldman's book is that whether we thrive depends far more on how we choose to treat others than on how we ourselves are treated.  The path to our happy place starts with one choice: whether or not to be kind.  Especially when we really don't want to be.  True. engaged kindness takes effort.  Research shows that as we show kindness, even when it is undeserved, something changes, not necessarily in the other person, not yet, but in us.  When we answer unkindness with grace and harshness with gentleness, those actions don't just preserve our peace of mind; they transform theirs. 

The 30-day kindness challenge is designed to build a sustainable desire for and habit in each of three key aspects of kindness: avoiding negativity, finding and praising the positive, and performing kind actions that matter to someone else.  What was surprising to me is that we are not as kind as we think we are.  One of the ways that we are unkind is when we are suspicious.  We think we are justified in being suspicious but what we are doing is believing in the worst of people's intentions rather than looking for a more generous (and usually more accurate) explanation.  Suspicion sneaks its way inside our hearts and comes out of our mouths as negativity.  Build a bridge even when you would rather battle. 

In summary, the challenge requires you to pick someone with whom you want a better relationship with and do the following in the next thirty days:
1. Say nothing negative about your person, either to them or about them to someone else.
2. Every day, find one positive thing that you can sincerely praise or affirm about your person and tell them, and tell someone else.
3. Every day, do a small act of kindness or generosity for your person.